Science Times: Increasingly acidic seas threaten oyster farming
Plus: A pregnant fossil, an interstellar visitor and homeless lab rats —
Science Times
July 8, 2025
A person in hiking gear kneels to point at a feature of a long dolphin-like fossil embedded in stone at their feet. A glacier and mountains line the horizon behind them.

Alejandra Zúñiga

Trilobites

Fiona the Pregnant Sea Reptile’s Fossil Hints at the Birth of a New Ocean

An ichthyosaur preserved beneath a Chilean glacier is helping scientists understand the extinct animals and the world around them as a supercontinent broke up.

By Kenneth Chang

A pixelated telescope image of blurry black-and-white dots has red cross hairs indicating the interstellar object at center.

David Rankin/Saguaro Observatory

It Came From Outside Our Solar System, and It Looks Like a Comet

3I/ATLAS, earlier known as A11pI3Z, is only the third interstellar visitor to be discovered passing through our corner of the galaxy.

By Kenneth Chang

A black-and-white historical photograph of boys hunched around a ball on the rooftop of a school that has a cage-like structure on top and on its sides.

Jacob A. Riis/Museum of the City of New York, via Getty Images

A Century Ago, Adolescents Weren’t Fully Human

Looking back at an awkward moment in the history of adolescent psychology.

By Matt Richtel

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Buildings of a variety of shapes including one with a NSF logo on a rock, snow-covered shore.

Colin Harnish/Shutterstock

Antarctica Faces Tense Future as U.S. Science Budget Shrinks

The continent is dedicated to research and cooperation, but proposed funding cuts in the Trump administration and actions by other world powers may alter the environment.

By Sarah Scoles

Article Image

Sonny Figueroa/The New York Times

Pet Theory

Don’t Like Eating Insects? Your Pet Might.

Could insect meal and lab-grown meat be a more sustainable, ethical way to feed our cats and dogs?

By Emily Anthes

An alphabetical list of 291 words found to be used excessively in research paper abstracts, rendered in the style of an iMessage chat.

Science Advances

454 Hints That a Chatbot Wrote Part of a Biomedical Researcher’s Paper

Scientists show that the frequency of a set of words seems to have increased in published study abstracts since ChatGPT was released into the world.

By Gina Kolata

Article Image

Thom Leach/Science Source

Origins

Scientists Use A.I. to Mimic the Mind, Warts and All

To better understand human cognition, scientists trained a large language model on 10 million psychology experiment questions. It now answers questions much like we do.

By Carl Zimmer

A hollering cowbird check, oversized for the nest it sits in, is approached by a yellow warbler mother bird with an insect in her mouth.

Trilobites

How a Parasitic Bird With No Parents Learns What Species It Is

Cowbird mothers abandon their eggs in the nests of other bird species, but the chicks somehow manage to find their flock and learn what they really are.

By Elizabeth Preston

A close-up view of a knotty sea spider, which has eight bulbous legs sprouting from a thorax and head, in a shallow pool of water in a dish with other sea spiders.

Trilobites

Sea Spiders Lack a Key Body Part and a Missing Gene Could Explain Why

Scientists have long sought to understand why sea spiders keep some of their most important organs in their legs.

By Veronique Greenwood

An albino rat peeks over the edge of a plastic tray.

E.P.A. Employees Are Invited to Adopt Soon-to-Be Homeless Lab Rats

The agency is cutting animal testing of chemicals. Some scientists are concerned, but in the meantime the rats (and zebra fish) need new homes.

By Hiroko Tabuchi

An older Franklin Stahl, with white hair and bushy eyebrows, wearing a blue button-down shirt, sits outside on a deck with a large tree behind him.

Franklin W. Stahl, 95, Dies; Helped Create a ‘Beautiful’ DNA Experiment

He and a colleague proved a theory advanced by the Nobel Prize winners James Watson and Francis Crick, who discovered DNA’s helical structure.

By Delthia Ricks

CLIMATE CHANGE

A person is overlooking raging floodwaters that have engulfed trees and are churning so violently, they are foaming white.

Ronaldo Schemidt/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

As the World Warms, Extreme Rain Is Becoming Even More Extreme

Even in places, like Central Texas, with a long history of floods, human-caused warming is creating the conditions for more frequent and severe deluges.

By Raymond Zhong

White smoke streams out of several smokestacks at a coal burning power plant that sits between a pond and a river.

Joshua A. Bickel/Associated Press

How the G.O.P. Bill Will Reshape America’s Energy Landscape

Here’s a rundown on the winners and losers in the legislation muscled through Congress.

By Brad Plumer

A tall furnace pipe with a flame at the top is seen against a cloudy sky.

Afolabi Sotunde/Reuters

Methane-Tracking Satellite Is Lost, in a Blow to Climate Efforts

The spacecraft, MethaneSAT, was just a year into its mission to provide a clearer picture of planet-warming emissions from oil and gas sites.

By Raymond Zhong

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HEALTH

A large circular CT scanner holds a patient whose hands lay on a pillow behind their head. On the two walls on either side of the scanner are bucolic mountain scenes on a bright day.

Lung Cancer Screening on Wheels

On the road with a 68,000-pound tractor-trailer that crisscrosses West Virginia, saving lives.

By Kristian Thacker and Simar Bajaj

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Animation by Aimee Sy

Inside the Collapse of the F.D.A.

How the new health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is dismantling the agency.

By Jeneen Interlandi

A close-up view of colorful M&M’s packed into a tube.

Hilary Swift for The New York Times

Kennedy’s Battle Against Food Dyes Hits a Roadblock: M&M’s

The health secretary has used peer pressure to persuade food makers to nix synthetic dyes. The candy industry is holding out, arguing American consumers like bright sweets.

By Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Julie Creswell

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Kate Medley for The New York Times

‘Tears My Heart to Pieces’: North Carolina Braces for Medicaid Cuts

President Trump’s domestic policy law jeopardizes plans to reopen one rural county’s hospital — and health coverage for hundreds of thousands of state residents.

By Eduardo Medina

A grid of four images: a close-up of a blue fan, a person lying in bed looking </div><script type=